Director's Statement

I didn't set out to make a film about a virus, or a bioweapon, or the end of the world. Those are the circumstances. The film is about two brothers, and what's left of them when everything easy is stripped away.

Samuel and Jude come from opposite instincts. One believes the only way through is to hold onto what's right, even when it costs him. The other has learned that survival doesn't leave room for that kind of luxury. Mac is the catalyst who arrives and puts both of those beliefs to the test. I built the story around that tension because I think most of us carry both of those voices somewhere inside us, especially when things get hard enough.

The Reckoning is set in the last uneasy days before the world fully unravels: a tribulation, not yet an ending. But the story I actually wanted to tell has never been about the tribulation itself. It's about faith in the broadest sense I know: faith in other people, faith that forgiveness is still possible, faith that there's something worth staying alive for even when the sky itself feels like a warning.

There's always a line. In a world like this, it might be unrecognizable. That's the sentence I kept coming back to while we were shooting. Every character in this film is trying to find that line again, and some of them find it too late.

Dan Lennox
Writer & Director